Americans in the gulag

Just caught a fascinating piece in the Times Literary Supplement about the thousands of Americans who, either out of idealism or to escape the Great Depression, moved to the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Many of them were then swept up in Stalin’s purges and ended up in the gulag system. It’s a piece of history I knew nothing about, and made fascinating and very sad reading. The piece is a review – a summary, basically – of the book The Foresaken by Tim Tzouliadis, which I’ve added to my lengthening list of books to be read.